During adverse weather conditions heavy rain can lead to rivers breaking their banks and lakes overflowing causing flooding to the surrounding countryside. Coastline defenses can also be breached by increased sea swell and large waves. The main form of defense against such flooding is to build a physical barrier constructed from sand bags. Often little warning is given of flooding and the transport communications to remote locations can delay, or even prevent, the raw materials for the sand bags being delivered in time.
Another situation where a fluid barrier is required at short notice is when a chemical or oil leak has occurred. In such cases, the spillage must be prevented from spreading into neighboring water supplies.
A barrier system may also be required to prevent the flow of particle matter, such as snow or sand. A mass of small particles can move in a fluid-like manner. The movement of both snow and sand can have fluid characteristics. The barrier system is quick to erect and prevents the movement of such matter.
The continued development of terrain that is subject to flooding has heightened the need for temporary flood control barriers that can be easily transported, quickly erected at the desired site and then disassembled when the need for flood protection is relieved. High-yield crop land, for example, is typically found in the floodplains of significant rivers of the world. Although a substantial amount of such crop land is normally protected from flooding by permanent earth dikes or levees, such levees are often inadequate and are subsequently breached causing flooding of large areas of land that has various kinds of development thereon including residential and commercial structures, roadways, railroads, and virtually all forms of civilian development. Such development also takes place in flood prone areas that are not protected from flooding by permanent dikes or levees.
The time available to provide at least temporary flood protection for structural developments in flood prone areas may range from several hours to several days. For example, during the severe flooding of the Mississippi River floodplains in July, 1993, predicted flood levels or “crests”, particularly downstream of the source of flooding, were available several days prior to the critical flood period. In this case, attempts to protect many structures in floodplain areas behind the threatened levees or dikes were unsuccessful in that sand bag barriers or temporary earthen dikes or levees were quickly breached once the flood waters impinged on these structures. The permanent earthen levees or dikes were, in many cases, topped by the rising flood waters and efforts to increase the height of these levees using wooden planks, sandbags, or temporary sand or earth fill were largely unsuccessfully. Moreover, the erection of sandbag and earth fill barriers are labor and equipment intensive and time consuming and such structures can rapidly become saturated and structurally weakened to the point of failure. Still further, earth fill barriers create a problem with respect to removal after the flood-waters have subsided.
Accordingly, the aforementioned continued development of floodplain and other flood prone areas has created a need for temporary flood control barriers that are easily transported and erected, are not subject to structural weakening from water saturation, are not particularly labor or equipment intensive, and may be removed and reused when needed.
The present embodiments meet these needs.
The present embodiments are detailed below with reference to the listed Figures.